Now, I don't know if it's possible to have PX somewhere near the Sun and fake the sunspot closup images of the Sun -- but if they actually cut and paste areas of Sun wherever PX was, for it wouldn't be very big compared to the total Sun image, well, then for the rest of the images it would, hypothesis-following, be much easier.

Why? Because SOHO and Stereo-Ahead/-Behind don't even show the centre of the Sun. So if PX were in front of it in our view in the past few years of rotation, we wouldn't notice. And if it were beside, it would be covered up but -- oops, a few leaks.